Last Friday, November 19 the City of Portage held a meeting to review a few items, one of them being the chicken 'issue'. Honestly it was a little tedious to watch because in my opinion they concentrated on silly things like what they chickens were going to be housed in, if they needed to be housed in something at all. They did not seem to be knowledgeable about the care that goes into a chicken. I'm not a professional but even I know that a chicken must be housed in some sort of sheltered area or it will not survive a Michigan winter.
Nothing is going to be decided until the council meets again on December 16. Hopefully this time they actually do make a decision. Some updates they were discussing included raising the number of chickens people would be allowed to own up to six. Which would be nice depending on the size of the family the chickens would be providing for. They also discussed possible ways to keep track of what citizens own chickens, so that they might be able to monitor the care of the chickens and made sure the home owner is taking proper care of them.
I looked up a few chicken coop models and have been playing around with where I might be able to build the coop. Luckily my dad is good at building things, so I'm sure he'll give me a hand with all the construction. But since nothing has been concretely decided I'm not sure what I'll be able to do and what I won't be able to do.
On another note, I checked out some books from the local library and hopefully over Thanksgiving break my teachers will be merciful and not assign too much work so I can do research on raising chickens and other research on how to live more self sufficiently. One book I checked out is on how to live sufficiently on a quarter acre or less, which is perfect for me. Soon I will get more reading done and share what I have learned. Its just difficult to study for all my classes at once and do extra reading and go to work. I've had quite a busy week.
My sister who lives in Portland, Oregon has three chickens in her back yard and she LOVES them! Is Portage meeting to decide whether or not to allow chickens at all? Or are they meeting to increase the number of chickens allowed?
ReplyDeleteIt seems silly to me that any city would NOT allow chickens, when less than 100 years ago it was standard for nearly every household to have chickens. Hmm....
Thanks for posting! Please keep us updated on this!
I really hope we get to have chickens--I want some blue eggs! I think it's absurd that Portage hasn't allowed residents to own any chickens; unless they had 10 acres! Seriously, one chicken doesn't need 10 acres; especially if the city is allowing horses on 5 acres. A lot of the people at the meeting seemed really supportive of being able to have chickens. We can only hope the city council members will do some research, listen to the advice of people knowledgeable about raising micro-flocks, and will not succumb to ignorance. Fingers crossed!
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